


'Team Player'

by AlphaElixir



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Abused!keith, In the Beginning, Keith (Voltron) Backstory, Lance is a dick, Memory transmit Systems, Orphan Keith, Orphanage, Team Voltron Family, abusive families, adoptive families, angry keith, non descriptive child abuse, sad keith, violence though not descriptive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-16
Updated: 2017-03-16
Packaged: 2018-10-05 23:50:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10320392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlphaElixir/pseuds/AlphaElixir
Summary: Keith's having a hard time being on a team and somehow ends up with everyone looking into his memories and he's bad at showing only the good ones.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Just needed to put something out there and seeing as I'm currently horribly buried in VLD right now I decided to put this out there. I really should have used the time to work on my other not finished work but I had to. Sorry it's bad but it's too late. This work is out there now. Anyway, leave comments and kudos!!

He wasn’t even trying to hide his bad mood at this point. Voltron had split in the midst of battle, leaving the paladins to fend for themselves in individual lions at half power against a whole Galra fleet. The shame of having turned tail and run through a worm hole left a bitter taste in everyone’s mouths. Lance knew exactly whose fault it was, and rather than be a good “team sport” like Shiro called it, he lashed out at the only person who always rose to the bait.

“We could have beat them! If you hadn’t messed up and split apart we could have taken that hole fleet out!” Lance's tone is a little over yelling now despite Keith being nearly a foot away. Their faces are close. So close Lance can see the flecks of lilac in the otherwise plumb irises of his ‘rival’.

“Oh, please. It wasn’t only my fault. We all split.”

“Yeah, because Voltron can’t stay formed if one of us separates. Duh! Or did you not get the message during all our training, Dropout?”

“You two knock it off, now isn’t the time for this,” Shiro says. He’s trying to diffuse the situation even if only slightly. He feels just as upset but he knows there’s no reason in passing blame.

“You say that all the time but when are you going to admit that one of us is screwing up lately, and their name starts with a K?” Lance won’t back off this time. This had been humiliating and he’s had enough of that feeling for the next ten lifetimes.

“Fine, you know what, blame me then. I’m sorry and I’ll do better next time. There, now can we drop it?” Keith huffs. He isn’t in the mood for this either. It’s not like he did anything to exactly call for Voltron to split, not that he knows of, but if admitting to being guilty will get the baby off his back than sure. He messed up. He’s done that a lot in his lifetime, what’s the blame of one more?

“Thank you, though that isn’t sincere in the least.”

The case is dropped and everyone resumes regular duties around the ship.

Three days later it all goes to shit…again.

The Galra had tracked them down on an undiscovered planet and, in the process of trying to get the paladins, had harmed many of the natives. They’d all gotten separated during the battle, Shiro with Lance, Hunk with Coran and Allura, and Keith with Pidge.

Once the battle had ended, thankfully in team Voltron’s favor, Pidge was the one to start yelling. “What the hell was that? Keith!” She grabed at his arm, his wince and grit teeth unnoticed much like the bloody wound all the way down his forearm.

“What?” He forces out. The other paladins are just regrouping around them. They all look, more or less, a lot better than Keith.

“What was that? You don’t charge in to a battle like that when you have a partner. Share some of the load you don’t have to do all this shit by yourself.” She yells back into his face.

“Language,” space dad pops in. Keith wants to roll his eyes. There kids, teenagers, a year or two or three from being adults, literally battling in space to save their lives and everyone elses’ and Shiro thinks censored language is important?

“Look, I had the better advantage and I took it. No harm no foul.” He replies. He stares down at her, waiting for her to release his arm, before stomping away. He’ll get to the Med bay and fix himself up before anyone else has time to nag him about his battle strategies.

“Wait a moment.”

Fuckin. Lance. He can’t just let things go can he?

“We aren’t done. What is up with you? You mess us up on forming Voltron and now you’re pushing Pidge aside to what? Be the hero? Dude, maybe you were the shit at the Garrison but here, in space, you’re just like the rest of us. Okay? You’re not that special up here.”

Keith wants to punch him. Mostly for all the accusations. Partly for his annoying voice and the way he pries and pries into things. Keith’s more of a ‘let bygones be bygones’ sort of person.

“I don’t think I’m better than you, or Shiro, or anyone on this team. I didn’t think that way when we were at the Garrison either. I told you, I had the-“

“The advantage. Blah, blah, blah. I don’t buy that. Give me a more believable lie.”

Keith clenches his fists, which hurt like hell from his wounds, and tries to fight back the coil of anger in his core. “What does it matter? Pidge is fine, you’re all fine, and I’m fine. We’re all alive and the Galra were defeated. Mission accomplished.”

“Wait, Keith. Just because we won this time doesn’t mean we’ll win every time, especially if you’re determined to throw yourself into a battle solo when you have back up. We are a team and we have to fight like one.”

“Sure, Shiro.” And that’s all Keith has to say on the matter. He makes his way back to the ship to patch himself up while the others help the natives regroup.

It’s approximately two earth weeks later that the ‘team’ minus Keith meets in the control room.

“Okay, so we’re all noticing Keith’s behavior and it’s becoming a hazard for Voltron. We have to come up with a way to get him to communicate with us. Tell us what’s going on with him so we can fix it,” Shiro says.

Allura’s hand shoots into the air. “I have just the thing.” She promptly runs form the room, returning seconds (ticks?) later with seven head gears. They’re similar to the ones they wore before, to practice forming Voltron, but these are a lot thinner with some sort of transparent visor to cover most of their face.

“And that is?” Shiro asks.

Lance interrupts whatever explanation Allura was about to speak. “Does it matter? If it gets Keith off his high horse, I’m all for it.” He gets a very disappointed look from Shiro for that.

“These are MTS’s, or memory transmitting systems. The MTS can basically show you selected memories from one person in a realistic style. Me and my old girl friends used to play with these all the time. It’s more of a game for children but I suppose it would work well here too. We could ask Keith to show us some of his memories. Maybe then we could gain his perspective of things?”

“That sounds like a great idea if Keith wasn’t the stubborn kid he is. I highly doubt you’ll be able to talk him into something like that.” Shiro, the spoil sport, says.

“20 bucks says I get it on him. How does it work?” Lance says mischievously.

* * *

 

Turns out, Hunk, Shiro, and Pidge are out 20 dollars once they return to Earth.

The headgear is placed upon Keith’s head while he’s eating, unaware of the horrors that will commence. It puts Keith in a sort of trance while the other paladins put their similar headgear on.

The next thing their aware of is the flash of blue and a white void. Everyone is there, but nothing else.

“What he hell?!” Keith says. He looks furious, as Lance figured he would, but what’s done is done.

“Look, everyone agreed that you’re acting strange and we can’t be a team if you’re still trying to be solo Keith so Allura gave us this kid’s headgear thing-“ he points to his head where the headgear is supposed to be, “so that we can see what’s going on.”

It’s a poor explanation.

“What Lance is saying, is maybe, if you show us some of your memories, your life before this, we’ll be able to understand you better. He’s right about our teamwork. It’s lacking and it’s only a matter of time before we end up seriously injured because of it. Please Keith?”

Shiro’s giving him those damn puppy eyes again and just when he’s about to politely decline Shiro tilts his head down. Maximum puppy eyes.

Damn it all to hell.

“Fine. But I don’t see where this is going to change anything.” He watches the relief on everyone’s faces. “What do I have to do?”

“Just think of any specific memory. As long as you focus we’ll all be in the moment and see it. The moment you stop thinking about it we’ll be here again. That way you don’t have to over share.”

Seems safe enough.

Execpt he has a lot of things he doesn’t want his team, his friends, to see and he’s horrible at burying memories apparently. Because the moment one starts he can’t stop thinking about what happens next and the oversharing begins.

He doesn’t mean to make them witness his mother leaving him and his father when he was young. Doesn’t mean to show them his father dropping him off at the orphanage when he was six. Doesn’t mean to show them the kids avoiding him or bullying him about being weird and unwanted at such a late age.

Certainly doesn’t mean to show them the moment he flips and nocks the boys teeth out for calling him names the next day.

He shows them his first home by choice. Shows them the plump lady who fed him nearly five meals a day and the old man who would swat him away from the cookies cooling on the counter. Keith did not mean to show them the way both sets of eyes looked at him sadly when they took him back to the orphanage and left him there. How he cried for days afterward and how the boy, missing his two front teeth, called him the unwanted kid.

He showed them the third and fourth family, both ending the same. He means to skip over the fifth and the sixth but his mind is a traitor and before he can think of something else he’s imagining the man with fists of steel and the woman that shrank into the corner, pushing at his shoulders to put him in front of her, as protection. He pictures the next man with his hands around his throat and squeezing. Keith remembers how useless he’d felt as his vision started to fail him.

He does not mean to show them that. Or the time said man back hands him so hard his back smashes into the table upturning the cans of soda and the leftover pizza onto the floor. They didn’t need to see him get the shit beat out of him for that.

He tries to lighten the load by showing them the eighth family, the young man who taught him to fight when he was 15 and the pie the two would share once a month. He doesn’t mean to show them the man bleeding out on the floor of a bank while he’s hyperventilating inches away despite the robbers repeatedly telling him to ‘shut the hell up.’

He shows them how he went back to the orphanage, stayed there with all the older kids as the younger ones cycled in and out. At 16 he’s forced to sign up for the Garrison despite his lack of consent in the matter. Though he doesn’t really care at this point. He has no where else to go so he agrees.

Keith shows them his first simulator run. His first test score. All pitiful. He shows them how he studied, practiced, and trained to get the skill set he has. How he talked back to instructors and why. Shows them the day he met Shiro and the first words either spoke. Keith’s being harsher.

He smiles into the visor when he thinks about their pranks and trips out of the Garrison on the hovercraft. How he’d eyed a motorcycle in town and Shiro had dragged him away by his ear.

But like all the other memories he can’t stop himself form thinking about the Kerberos mission. How he saw the news flashing over every screen the Garrison had. How he quickly dismissed the idea of ‘pilot error’ and their shitty excuses. He doesn’t mean to show them how he crashed the simulator time after time after time in some sort of suicidal ideology and disobedience to the place claiming ‘pilot error’ on Shiro’s behalf. Doesn’t want to show them the way he’d walked right up to the instructor of the class at the time and spat in his face, “that’s what ‘pilot error’ looks like. Should I show you more?” Or the way he’d been kicked out of the Garrison for it.

He doesn’t intent to show them how he snags the hovercraft he and Shiro had used and taken off into the desert with tears in his eyes. He’s 18 now, no longer forced to stay at the orphanage, and therefore, has nowhere to go. He finds an abandoned shack in the middle of god knows nowhere and stays.

He shows them how he’d poured cup after cup of coffee and stayed up for 36-48 hours at a time trying to decipher the weird signals he’d been getting since moving in. He doesn’t mean to show the way two Garrison officers bring a box to his door and leaves. He’s stuck staring down at a box of Shiro’s belongings, surly things his family doesn’t miss, because it’s not HIM. Not Shiro. But Keith gently brings the box in and pulls out a shirt he often wore because Shiro complained that although his mother bought it it was too scratchy for him. He doesn’t mean to show them how he hugged the shirt close to him and cried that night.

He skips to the moment he finds Shiro. Shows Shiro specifically, the rescue and his piloting skills on the craft he always laughed at Keith for not being able to accurately control. Doesn’t mean to show him the way he’d shoved the box into the closet and out of Shiro’s line of view after snagging new clothes for him.

He shows the night the bomb went off in the castle and Lance got hurt. Shows how he’d fought with anger and pure spite towards the Galra for it. He doesn’t mean to show the way he’d panicked when Lance’s breathing turned shallow. Or the way he’d petulantly tapped the healing pod waiting for Lance to come out.

He skips to the time they were all separated and shows him and Shiro spiraling off to a dangerous planet. Shows the way he’d deduced Red’s uselessness when powered off. He does not mean to show them the way he’d frantically searched for Shiro, nearly mindlessly searching for something familiar before Shiro had calmed him down over the coms by saying his always useful quote, ‘patience yields focus.’

He skips to the night Voltron had split apart, how it had happened suddenly and to his knowledge, fell apart for no reason. He does not mean to show them the way he’d punched the wall in his room after the argument with Lance. Or the talk he’d had with himself about not fucking this up in the bathroom mirror.

He doesn’t mean to show the many times he’d overworked himself with the gladiator bots in some distorted form of self-punishment when his actions don’t meet his expectations. He doesn’t mean to show the time he’d fractured a rib from the gladiators kick and had to lay low by staying with Pidge when she’d been working on enhancing Green’s barriers.  

He does not mean to show the fight where he’d almost saw Pidge getting gutted by a damn Galra drone and had instead shoved her back and taken the knife to his arm before slashing through it and the remaining four in retribution of even attempting to go after his friend.

Safe to say he thinks back to the white room and closes his eyes. It’s Lance’s voice that makes him open them again.

“I’m sorry. I get it. I’m sorry.”

Keith is a little lost by the apology. “For what?”

“For what? Dude, you had the crappiest life I’ve ever seen. I’m actually surprised you haven't knocked my teeth out like you did that kid. I mean, I’ve said some, in light of what I’ve witnessed, shitty things to you. You worked your ass off to get this good and I down play it like you had the talent since you got there. You pushed Pidge away because you didn’t want to see another friend disappear. Dude, you made one friend in all your life and he gets abducted by aliens. I don’t think you could have worse luck.”

Real pick me up there, Lance.

“I’m sorry too. Thanks for taking the hit.” Pidge murmurs. Keith stays quiet.

“Man, that’s real brave of you. I thought you chose to leave the Garrison but they kicked you out because you kept calling bull on their error theories. And look, you were right.” Hunk pats his back.

“It’s a good thing none of those other families wanted you,” Lance smiles. Keith feels a little hurt at the jab. “I mean, if they had you wouldn’t have this awesome family. Could you imagine?”

Keith scoffs before laughing. No he can’t imagine not being the red Paladin of Voltron, the member of a rag tag team of accidental saviors of the universe. He shakes his head.

“We’re glad to have you Keith.” Allura says. Coran, the silent member so far, steps forward and initiates the group hug. Keith is not used to this, not ready for physical contact. But it’s warm and technically inside a white void. Their bodies aren’t actually touching so he’ll let it slide.

“Now, who’s next?” Keith questions.


End file.
